Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Cosmology
Links and Comments: The Profound and the Pernicious
From NPR, The Answer To Life, The Universe — And Everything? It’s 63. The headline is a riff on the famous episode in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Wikipedia) in which a vast computer called Deep Thought … Continue reading
Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers
Science: The Atlantic: Are We Living in a Giant Cosmic Void?. Maybe. Scientific American: How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support. Subtitle: “They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups” Guardian: … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Lunacy, MInd, Psychology, Science
Comments Off on Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers
Big History
I’ve just recently become aware of the concept, and term, “Big History”. It happened when I saw a coffee table book, shown here, at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and glanced through it, noticing two names I recognized: … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Evolution, Human Progress
Comments Off on Big History
Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths
Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science
Comments Off on Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths
Sean Carroll Interview
Phil Torres talks to Sean Carroll, author of a book coming out Tuesday that I’m greatly looking forward to, The Big Picture Salon: “The evidence is pretty incontrovertible that he doesn’t exist”: Stephen Colbert’s favorite scientist on the universe, naturalism … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Trump; Magic; Scalia and science; Cruz; God of the gaps
Partly because I’ve had a cold, or a couple different colds, for much of the past month, I’m behind on links and comments. So relatively briefly, here’s what I’ve collected. In reverse order, from most recent date. \\ Slate: “How … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Politics, Religion, science fiction
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Trump; Magic; Scalia and science; Cruz; God of the gaps
Alan Lightman on Cosmology and Human Meaning
Yesterday I mentioned the Harper’s essay by Alan Lightman, What Came Before the Big Bang?, which concerns a couple different theories for that question: one by Sean Carroll and Alan Guth, a so-called “Two-Headed Time” theory, and another by Ukrainian/US … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology
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Links and Comments: Science and Math and Religion
Radio interview with Lee Goldman, MD, about his new book Too Much of a Good Thing, subtitled “How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us”. This is about the familiar idea that our species is optimized for survival in … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Fermi Paradox; books by Brian Attebery and Frank Wilczek; Religious suppression; Religious fantasy
NY Times, Dennis Overbye: The Flip Side of Optimism About Life on Other Planets. (The print version was titled “A Case for Why We’re Alone”.) A consideration of the “Fermi paradox”: why, if by reasonable estimates there are likely millions … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Narrative, Physics
Comments Off on Links and Comments: Fermi Paradox; books by Brian Attebery and Frank Wilczek; Religious suppression; Religious fantasy
Links and Comments: Lucky Numbers; Paleo diet; Narratives about Charleston; Pinker on violence, and the news media
First, keying off my earlier post today about the Alan Lightman book, here’s an essay by George Johnson in the New York Times about Humankind’s Existentially Lucky Numbers. Four fundamental forces rule reality, but why is the number not three … Continue reading